With a number of rammed earth projects under its belt, the Paris-based practice is championing the use of biobased materials in French constructionDchelette Architecture was shortlisted in the AR Emerging awards 2024. Read about the full shortlist hereOn a quiet residential street in BoulogneBillancourt, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, a new building interrupts the rhythm of plaster, stone and concrete facades. Unornamented yet elegant, its monolithic russet wall is made of rammed earth blocks, an unusual sight in Frances urban fabric. This is the Quatre Chemines social housing block by Dchelette Architecture, a Parisian practice founded in 2019 by brothersister duo Philibert and Emmanuelle Dchelette.Built with careful attention to craft, the fivestorey apartment block is contemporary and full of light, despite its earthy exterior. A timber structure sits behind the facade, and inside, eight compact onebedroom units are accessed by a central stair and lift core. The ecological sensibility of the project extends to a shared roof allotment, and a back garden overlooked by balconies built into the timberclad rear facade.The stratified rammed earth feels at once archaic and novel. A shopfront at street level is built from solid pale limestone, a nod to the long history of stone construction in Paris. Despite the buildings rough materiality, the facades Haussmannian proportions allow it to weave seamlessly into the streetscape. The rammed earth has been chamfered along one window edge, allowing more daylight to enter the streetfacing living rooms.The construction process was not without its challenges. Companies able and willing to work with rammed earth are few and far between, making local sourcing difficult. The prefabricated blocks for Quatre Chemines were made in Lyon, several hundred kilometres from Paris and not truly local, the architects concede. Yet using readymade blocks streamlined the construction process, and was a necessity after Dchelettes first rammed earth endeavour. This threestorey house in the 18th arrondissement was built in situ, and took six months to complete. In contrast, Quatre Chemines took just three weeks to assemble. The result is a 500mm solid wall that is indefinitely reusable, durable and beautifully textured in granular striations.Confident in their ability to build standalone facades, the practice is now designing three housing blocks incorporating loadbearing rammed earth walls in the Montvrain ecodistrict, east of Paris. We have to build with the climate, with material on hand nearby, says Philibert Dchelette, noting that French regulations require buildings to reduce their embodied carbon by more than 33 per cent between 2022 and 2031. More ambitiously, in 2023s COP28, the country set a goal to reduce building sector emissions to nearzero by 2030.Though Dchelette is among the first Parisian practices to embrace rammed earth in housing projects, the architects are not limited to pis. Currently, they are working with straw bale construction for a project in central Paris. Propelled by the urgency to build differently, the practice is part of a movement to reimagine material cultures in France and beyond. Their ambitions are to extend into public and cultural sectors, pushing the limits of biobased design.